Automated testing tools often take eXtensible Markup Language (XML) files as input to guide the automated testing. XML is a commonly used markup language that encodes information in a single human-readable and machine-readable format. However, even though XML is generally designed to be human-readable, many users are not familiar with the specific details of writing XML code. Thus, users who are not familiar with or conversant in XML are unable to quickly or easily create XML files for automated testing, or are completely unable to create such XML files.
Even users who are familiar with XML and who can author such XML files for automated testing purposes are prone to manually introducing flaws which are not detected until the XML file is supplied to an automated testing tool and the automated testing tool fails or throws an error. Such flaws can include typographical errors or logic deficiencies. Manual editing of XML files is also time consuming, leading to increased costs in configuring and running automated tests, or leading to reduced automated test coverage.